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We’re Saving a Piece of History – Let’s Keep the Progress Going!

A portion of Rosie the Riveter’s Willow Run Factory, located just east of Ypsilanti, Michigan, has been preserved to become the exciting new home for the Yankee Air Museum. Now, we’re raising the funds necessary to continue the building renovation, so that we can eventually fill it with exciting exhibits that tell the story of Rosie and the Arsenal of Democracy production miracle that helped America and her Allies win WWII, as well as share the excitement of aviation and technology with future generations.

More than 40,000 workers from across America came together at Willow Run to build more than 8,600 B-24 Liberator bomber aircraft. Willow Run was more than that though…it played an enormous role in changing our society:

FROM SOUTH TO NORTH, COUNTRY TO CITY People moved in great numbers to southeastern Michigan from the South and from more rural areas to work at Willow Run, accelerating growth and development throughout the region, and sparking a demographic trend that continues to this day.

THE CHANGING FACE OF LABOR Women, minorities and other groups that had largely been excluded from America’s best manufacturing jobs entered the industrial workforce through Willow Run and changed the composition of that workforce forever.

THE BIRTHPLACE OF MODERN MANUFACTURING Willow Run also changed how we produce things, taking American manufacturing beyond the assembly line to embrace new ways of organizing production and managing inventory that we now call “just in time” manufacturing.

The Arsenal of Democracy

B-24 Liberator bombers rolling down the assembly line at Willow Run in 1942.

No matter how you look at it, the Willow Run story is a pivotal chapter in American history, as shown in this video, an excerpt from a wartime documentary commissioned by The Ford Motor Company. The Willow Run story is about an amazing place and people that helped win a world war, set the stage for equality and social change, and dramatically accelerated the development of southeastern Michigan, making it an area known the world over as “The Arsenal of Democracy.”

In 1941, both the US government and established aircraft manufacturers believed it impossible to build aircraft on an assembly line, and initially hoped The Ford Motor Company would help the war effort by handcrafting one airplane per day. Ford’s chief manufacturing engineer, Charles Sorensen, believed assembly line production of airplanes was possible, and sketched a plan overnight in his California hotel room. That plan became Willow Run, which included an major airport, a 5 million sq. ft. manufacturing plant designed by famed architect Albert Kahn, and a village for the workers, all rising from scratch on former farm fields in less than a year. Aircraft production began in 1941, and at its peak during the war years, Willow Run produced B-24 Liberator bombers at the astounding rate of one airplane every hour!

War production at Willow Run also changed the local landscape. The Detroit Industrial Expressway, known to most of us as I-94, was opened in 1942 to connect the new complex at Willow Run to Detroit. Willow Village was built adjacent to the plant, with hastily erected housing and infrastructure for 15,000 of the plant’s workers, a population greater than that of Ypsilanti’s at the time.

We Owe a Lot to Rosie the Riveter

“Rosie the Riveter,” “Acetylene Annie,” and friends took over highly-paid jobs formerly reserved for men, and performed admirably.

In addition to manufacturing history, the Willow Run plant was the harbinger of great social change.

As war production ramped up at the plant, Americans from the South migrated north in droves, attracted by the high-paying jobs at the plant. As more and more men were drafted into combat, women were called on to perform jobs formerly reserved for men. These pioneering women in manufacturing were known collectively as “Rosie the Riveter,” and celebrated for their patriotism. And in the race to win World War II, minority groups that were previously excluded from these coveted jobs were now welcomed.

The barriers broken down by wartime manufacturing plants like Willow Run laid the groundwork for the civil rights and women’s movements of the following decades, and the sweeping social changes that we benefit from today.

Let’s Make Sure the Story Doesn’t End Here!

A portion of the eastern end of the Willow Run Plant would be preserved, and along with part of Willow Run Airport’s Hangar Building, become the new home of the Yankee Air Museum.

The former Bomber Plant was a 5,000,000 square foot, 70+ year-old factory for which there was little likelihood of finding a buyer that would keep it standing.

In response, the Save the Bomber Plant campaign was created to preserve a critical portion of the plant, and then use it to tell the amazing story of Willow Run to future generations as well as provide an exciting new permanent home for the Yankee Air Museum and its historic flyable WWII-era aircraft.

Our goal is to save, preserve and renovate a portion of the eastern end of the historic Plant, where the B-24 Liberator bombers were completed and exited the plant to make their maiden flights over southeast Michigan.

There’s still a lot of work to be done to turn our preserved portion of the historic Plant into a museum.